


Comfort Zone

by astroturfwars



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, awkward teenagers in like, happy valentine's day y'all, hinata has sweaty hands, kageyama is afraid of zambonis, or any store i guess it's not walmart specific, walmart au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 19:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1196649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astroturfwars/pseuds/astroturfwars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hinata is both the epicenter and the outer limit of Kageyama's comfort zone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort Zone

It was a good idea at the time. Kageyama is sure that at some point he had to have thought this was a good idea. He wouldn’t have gone along with it otherwise, right?

Kageyama looks from the wreckage of the candy display to Hinata, who’s paling quickly as the echoes of the crash die down. The cause of this mess, a humming zamboni, sits proudly at the edge of the chaos as though it were some innocent pet instead of an unruly beast. Kageyama still has no idea how Tsukishima operates the damn thing, and in light of the situation he suspects he never will—that is, assuming he still has his job in the morning.

Hinata gulps and looks up at Kageyama. Kageyama realizes that no, he never thought this was a good idea. He’d let himself get caught up in the web of Hinata’s enthusiasm, as always, and they’d fallen prey to the fifty percent chance of failure that all Hinata’s ideas carried. This incidence of failure is more catastrophic than usual; it’s much worse than the time they’d tried to see who could wheel in more shopping carts at once (the damage to the car they’d hit had only warranted two days’ suspension). Right now Kageyama and Hinata are knee-deep in what used to be a seven-foot display of Valentine’s Day candy, and come morning they’ll be neck-deep in trouble.

Kageyama briefly considers making Hinata pick up the mess by himself. Hinata looks a little like he might puke from nerves if he doesn’t calm down soon, though, and that’s undesirable for two reasons: it would only add to the mess, and something in Kageyama’s chest feels a little off when Hinata isn’t in good condition. Kageyama shelves that idea and crouches down amidst the packages to help.

“Was it Suga-san who set that up?” Hinata asks weakly, kneeling among crumpled heart-shaped boxes and checking to see which ones had burst from their thin plastic packaging during the fall. He looks like he already knows the answer, which is: yes. They share a shudder at the idea of incurring their assistant sub-manager’s disappointment—and sub-manager Daichi’s subsequent wrath--and resume cleaning with renewed vigor.

It takes an hour to clean up and stack the boxes so they vaguely resemble their previous form. The change will definitely be noticeable in the morning, but Kageyama figures the display will pass until Suga comes in and restores it to its former glory. At any rate, the odds are fair that he and Hinata won’t be put on probation yet again, so Kageyama doesn’t protest when Hinata yawns hard enough to make his jaw pop, shoots a glance at the back door, and suggests they head home.  
Hinata walks the zamboni back to the supply closet and Kageyama goes ahead of him to wait just outside the back door. The night air is colder than Kageyama had thought it would be this morning when he left the house, and he shifts foot to foot impatiently as he waits for Hinata to come out. Kageyama’s got the keys, meaning he has to lock up instead of hightailing it to his bike and heading home. That wouldn’t be much of a problem if Hinata weren’t taking so long to come out. 

“Hurry up,” Kageyama calls. Hinata yells something sharp and probably insulting back, and yelps in time with a loud thud that means he’s probably run the zamboni into the doorframe of the storage closet. Privately Kageyama decides the thing is a menace, and that he’s not messing with it again even if it means putting up with Tsukishima’s smirk as he leaves forty minutes earlier than the rest of the stockboys—and he’s not going to agree to help Hinata figure it out again, either. Not if he can help it.

He’s about to say as much when he sees Hinata come through the employee only hallway. Hinata meets him at the door and shoves something into his chest.

“It’s yours,” Hinata says, a little too forcefully, not quite looking at Kageyama. Kageyama could’ve guessed that from the way Hinata jabs him with whatever it is he’s holding.

Kageyama scowls, rubs at his stomach, and lifts the thing into the shitty flickering fluorescent light above the door. It’s a heart-shaped box—of chocolates, presumably, because it looks really familiar—, the outer edge crumpled on one side, and the surface of it is oddly slick. Hinata wipes his palms on his pants and Kageyama scrunches up his nose.

“Did you sweat on this?”

“So what?” Hinata counters, looking a little edgy.

Kageyama frowns at the box, unsure what to make of it, and asks, “Was it too damaged to put back?”

“No!” Hinata says vehemently. “It’s _for_ you.”

Kageyama opens his mouth, looks from the box and up to Hinata, who finally meets his eyes—and stops.

_For you_.

Kageyama’s head goes blank; his brain is a static hum as it attempts to restart itself. “What,” he says, mouth moving on autopilot.

Hinata sucks in a sharp breath and blurts out, rather bluntly, “I like you,” as though it’s no big deal to say something like that to his—maybe not best, but likely closest—friend. That moment of bravado lasts all of two seconds; a rush of pink tinges his cheeks in a delayed reaction, and he purses his lips as Kageyama stares. “What? Don’t give me that look, it’s freaky…”

It’s like being doused with hot water. Kageyama is warm all over and tingling, unsure of how exactly he feels; if he had enough time to parse it out, to really sit down and force himself to consider it, he might say he feels something like relief uncoiling in the center of his chest with the force of a giant spring. In this moment, though, with no time to think it over, Kageyama mostly feels like he’s been hit by a small orange truck. Hinata can clearly tell, because he’s fidgeting like hell and trying valiantly not to take a few steps back; but more noticeably he’s got this determined-yet-frightened look on his face that does something weird to Kageyama’s stomach. Kageyama isn’t sure of what to say to make it go away—he isn’t sure of what to do at all, really, and that fact is made clear in the long silence that ensues.

“Okay,” Kageyama says finally, filing it away to think about later. Apparently that was the right thing to say, because Hinata smiles as though he’s got all the faith in the world that Kageyama will come around.

Hinata slips back into routine then, gesturing down to the far end of the building, and says, “Bikes?”

It still takes a moment for Kageyama to snap out of it. He’s thrown off-kilter by the fact that he recognizes trust in Hinata’s face. When he comes around he finds himself a little calmer now that they’re on even ground, where he recognizes the way he and Hinata interact. This he can do: the racing and the bickering, returning Hinata’s challenging grin and quickening his pace to beat Hinata to the bike rack, turning the slightest bit to keep him in sight. Kageyama knows the flush of fresh exertion, the throb of adrenaline swimming beneath his skin; he even knows where Hinata’s shoulder will bump against his arm when they kneel next to each other to unlock their bikes and the way the heat Hinata radiates will tangle with Kageyama’s own so it feels like high noon between their skin. This kind of unspoken, comfortable coexistence is Kageyama’s comfort zone, and it feels as familiar as breathing.

Kageyama stops with his fingers on his bike lock and thinks maybe he shouldn’t have been blindsided by this at all. He considers that maybe he should say something to that effect, turns, and finds Hinata already looking at him. There’s an oddly fond smile on Hinata’s face, but it contorts into a flustered scowl when he catches Kageyama looking. Kageyama doesn’t dwell on it; seeing that kind of expression on Hinata’s face is confusing enough without trying to understand it. Instead he unlocks his bike, swings his leg over it, and waits for Hinata to do the same.

“See you tomorrow,” Hinata says. He flashes a smile like a sun flare and tamps it down quickly, going a little pink, before he turns his bike the opposite direction from Kageyama’s.

“Yeah,” Kageyama says, fighting the instinctive urge to smile back.

He makes it a block before giving in.

**Author's Note:**

> Cheesy awkward teenage confession Walmart AU Kagehina for Valentine's Day. That's really all this is.
> 
> (this would have been 6 months late without tumblr user [tokyotrashcats](http://tokyotrashcats.tumblr.com/) doing an incredible job of betaing as always)


End file.
